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Cadillac dealers get $5,000 incentive for ELR test drives

The 530 Cadillac dealers - out of 940 total dealers - that signed on to sell the brand's ELR for $75,000 or lease it for $699 per month have managed to move 247 of them in the last five months. That's a little less than two cars for each dealer more than two dealers for each car if you need help with the math. With inventories of the luxury plug-in hybrid building up - Automotive News reports a 725-day supply - General Motors has created the Demonstrator Allowance Program to billow the sails on that slow moving ship, giving dealers $5,000 to promote ELR test drives.
A dealer with one ELR in its test fleet that racks up 750 test driven miles between May 1 and June 2 earns the fifty Benjamins, a dealer with two ELRs in the test fleet will get one hundred Benjamins. That will be added to summer incentives for dealers that pay $2,000 for units sold in July and $1,000 for units sold in August, while on the customer side, Cadillac has put "customer discount certificates" worth $3,000 on the hood for buyers and lessees.
Cadillac suggests this is about raising awareness of the ELR, but the question is how much dealers will be able to do for a car that observers - and buyers, apparently - still consider highly overpriced.

GM intends to offer semi-autonomous vehicles by 2020

Prepare for a few years of technological saber-rattling, as the world's automakers begin pushing to bring self-driving cars to market. Earlier this week, Nissan announced that it aims to offer autonomous vehicles by 2020, while Google, BMW and several other marks are working on similar efforts.
General Motors is doing things differently, though. Rather than push for a fully autonomous car, it's continuing to refine its semi-autonomous Super Cruise, a product that we tested in April 2012 and that will eventually see use on some Cadillacs before trickling down to the rest of the General Motors family. Super Cruise, which is undergoing testing in the Cadillac SRX, doesn't take complete control out of the driver's hands. Rather, under a very specific set of circumstances on the freeway, it will marry the capabilities of things like lane departure warning and adaptive cruise control to allow the driver to take their hands off the wheel. All of which sounds a lot like the system Mercedes-Benz is launching on the 2014 S-Class.
The system is still in development, according to John Capp, GM's director of electrical controls and active safety technology. Now that that the biggest hurdle, steering control, has been cleared, GM's engineers can focus on things like teaching the system to adapt to differing road conditions and visibility levels. As we reported in 2012, Super Cruise is still befuddled in low-visibility situations or when road markings aren't particularly clear.

GM admits goal of 500,000 EVs by 2017 won't be met

After a little over four years of Chevy Volt sales, General Motors has a better handle on how many people it expects will buy cars with plugs. And it's less than the company thought back in 2012, when then-senior vice president of global product development, Mary Barra, said that GM expected to sell 500,000 "vehicles with electrification" by 2017. In a sustainability report released this week, GM says that half-million vehicle target will not be met but that it still, "believes the future is electric." In the report, GM says that, "For our commitment to electrification, our forecasted outlook currently projects us, along with the broader automotive industry, falling short of expectations for 2017. ... We continue to aspire to our stated goal." GM's electric lineup includes the Volt, the recently popular Spark EV, the slow-selling Cadillac ELR and upcoming Malibu Hybrid, CT6 plug-in hybrid and eAssist technology in the Buick LaCrosse and Regal. GM says it has 180,834 electrified vehicles on the road in the US today. In 2013, it had 153,034; 95,578 in 2012, and 39,843 in 2011. The company's next big plug-in vehicle will be the second-gen Chevy Volt, which is coming to market later this year, followed by the 200-mile Bolt EV coming, we think, in 2017. GM Employees on Mission to Transform Transportation Sustainability report outlines vehicle and manufacturing progress; sets new targets 2015-05-07 DETROIT – General Motors' just-released sustainability report chronicles efforts by the company's 216,000 employees to live out GM's newly defined purpose and values by earning customer loyalty, applying meaningful technology advances and improving the communities where it does business. These actions – led by CEO Mary Barra – further drive sustainability into the company's culture through building safer and smarter vehicles with less environmental impact. "GM will take a leading role in the auto industry's transformation as it undergoes an unprecedented period of change," said Bob Ferguson, senior vice president, GM Global Public Policy. "From GM's labs to its assembly lines, our people are driving the world to a better place through improved mobility." The company believes the future is electric, with billions of investment to support an all-in-house approach to the development and manufacturing of electrified vehicles. It now counts 180,834 on the road in the U.S – up from 153,034 in 2013.